Thursday, October 14, 2010

BUDDHISM

• China is not completely isolated from the rest of the world. Almost without exception, the first example to disprove this is the acceptance of Buddhism
• Buddhism is born in India but becomes “Chinese”. Buddhism doesn’t spread straight out of India, it comes from East Asia.
• Try to reconcile it with Daoism. Buddhism in the song dynasty becomes antagonistic towards Confucius thought. Then there are some who rebel and persecute Buddhism. However, it doesn’t fade away and is still strong in China today.
• The Buddha is a real live person. The Buddha? 563 – 483 BC. He is born in India to a kingdom/ tribe on the foothills of the Himalayan Mountain. The tribe? Sakya. Born into the khsatriya caste and is the rulers or kings. You are born and die within the caste. Your karma from previous lives decides your caste .Brahmans is the highest caste in India. Sakyamuni – sage of the sakya. Siddhartha Buddha. Clan name? Gautama.
• The Buddha was son of the prince of the sakya’s and as royalty was very wealthy. Was trained as a warrior and was learned in the ways of the chariot and was engaged to a beautiful young woman. Every shred of human suffering is removed from his sight and he grows up in palace splendor. He doesn’t see the real world and never experience real sickness. He is living inside a wall palace compound and is not permitted to see much of the outside world. As a young man he became restless and curious of the outside world. This leads to his 4 discoveries. He convinced his favorite charioteer to take him into the outside world. In the outside world, he sees and old man for the first time and asks “what is that repulsive being?” He had never encountered such a thing and is troubled. On another foray, he discovers a very sick man covered with sores and is feverish. His charioteer explains to the Buddha that all men are like this- old and sick. On another occasion he saw a corpse and saw that the body was being hauled to the cremation area. The Buddha saw mourners and people weeping, and questioned this too. His charioteer explained that all human beings MUST die. It could happen young or old, healthy or sick. But it is all of our destinies. On his last excursion he discovered a man with a yellow robe, he was obviously very poor, but the look on the man’s face was one of content, happiness, serenity, calmness, and that made him joyful. Upon questioning the charioteer, the charioteer could not answer. HOWEVER, Siddhartha wants this and he decides to become a beggar like the man he sees.
• He wants nothing but the contentment that he saw on the man's face.
• This leads to Siddhartha’s decision to resign everything and leaves. He cuts off all of his hair, takes off all of his jewels and sends these things back to his father.
• He leaves, is a beggar for some time and ultimately becomes a hermit in the forest. He learns from the religious leaders about the Upanishads and they talk about something called the Atman- which is the self that every human being possesses. Then, there is the Brahman which is the universal self. Atman is one in the same thing with the universal Brahman. It is a part of you, you are it. The understanding of this leads to revelation, Moksha, which is the liberation, known as reincarnation in the western world. This realization could take many lifetimes. It doesn’t just come.
• Eventually, the Buddha leaves the teaching of the Upanishads and doesn’t like Moksha because it is mere knowledge. He believes that there needs to be knowledge AND works.
• Goes on a new search and works on the “doing” part of what he believes. He practices asceticism, which is the denying yourself of one’s bodily needs- sex, drink, food, etc... He did this because asceticism wears down the karma. Karma- a tally of good and bad deeds, that determines where we are and what we are now. Can go back into the past but also extends into the future. True enlightenment, Moksha, can be fulfilled within 2 or 3 lifetimes through asceticism.
• One day, worn out because of all the years he had practiced asceticism, he passed out and his friends thought he had died. When he came around/woke up, he learned that asceticism was not the way. Immediately, he ate food and his ascetic friends are disgusted with him because he goes back on everything he practiced and they leave him, abandoning him. At this time, he learns the importance of the middle path- avoid extremes.
• He had known extreme indulgence and extreme asceticism. He also realizes that the middle path has to be in between knowing and doing.
• Sits under a tree called the tree of Wisdom and swears that he will never get up from there until his search was resolved. At the dawn of the 49^th day of sitting under the tree, in a sudden flash of insight, he had achieved the secret of sorrow- why the world is full of suffering and pain. He also received the “key” as to what humans need to do in order to overcome sorrow.
• At this time, he had become the Buddha.
• He then has a debate within himself, “share or not to share?”
• He decides that he will become the teacher of his beliefs and he goes to deer park to preach to his 5 ascetic friends. They immediately left their asceticism and become his disciples.
• The sermon contained the 4 noble truths and the 8 fold path:
1. Life is suffering, Life is pain.
2. Suffering is caused by desire. Kama= desire, lust, is longing. Anything you want is Kama and can be for food, sex, money, fame etc…
3. Desire can be conquered. Kama can be overcome.
4. The 8 fold path is how you overcome desire. Knowing and doing is inevitably intertwined with one another. The 4 noble truths were knowing and the 8 fold path was doing.
• Nirvana..
• A person is able to achieve nirvana in this life. You are free from desire and the cycle of birth and rebirth forever..
• There are no degrees or levels or stages of enlightenment- you either are or aren’t.
• The Buddha spends the next years spreading his religion to all those who will listen
• Buddhism is Indian and sometimes shares some aspects with Hinduism.
• It shares Samsara, the cycle of birth and rebirth.
• Also has karma in common, which determines the outcome of the future.
• In Buddhism, the achievement of nirvana is the elimination of suffering, this is primary. Secondary is the liberation of birth and rebirth.
• Buddhism tries to solve the problem of pain, Hinduism tries to solve the problem of birth and re-birth, and Christianity tries to solve the problem of alienation from God through sin.
• Right before the Buddha dies, he asks them if they want to ask something. There is nothing. The moment he dies, doctrinal issues within his disciples arise.
• When he dies, there are 2 branches of Buddhism, Mahayana and Tarabahna.
• Monastic impulse is alive in Christianity and Buddhism.
• You earn nirvana yourself for your own efforts, emphasis on strict monastic practices. This was termed Hinayana or Tarabahna.
• Mahayana Buddhist, Maha= big, Mahayana= big vehicle. It is probably Tarabahna that most closely resembles the teaching of the Buddha.
• Basic teaching of Mahayana: too many ppl suffering to all rely on their own efforts so there has to be another way. Then there emerges a Bodhisattva, one who WILL become a Buddha. It is a person who through his own efforts or merit, earns or achieve nirvana themselves. During death, at the very last moment before entering heaven, re-enters the earth, and focuses the attention on those who are living. The bodhisattva who does this is a savior type figure which allows people the ability to not have to earn nirvana themselves, and, can achieve it through the bodhisattva.
• Mahayana has sometimes been called a dumbed down version of Buddhism. How can you get a peasant to understand nirvana?
• Some bodhisattvas take names called Amitabha. Mahayana is the Buddhism that spreads to china, Japan and Korea.
• Mahayana Buddhism with its basic teaching life is suffering and here is a devotional way out that becomes quite attractive to the Chinese.
• Between China and India, there is the Himalaya Mountain range in between the two.
• When Buddhism 1^st appears in China, it is during the Han dynasty, during the times of Christ.
• Northern China, by the end of the 200s sees Buddhism first.
• The rulers of northern china, the “barbarians” tolerate Buddhism and they think its ok. They like the fact that there is no political agenda in the religion.
• By the end of the 4^th century, Buddhism begins to spread into southern china as well.
• In the south, it’s appealing because Confucian thought doesn’t really seem relevant to china at the time. The rulers see it as harmless and it contains similarities to Daoism.
• Eventually, they don’t just tolerate it, they become very devout Buddhists by the 400s and 500s.
• They want to know about what sutras are in India. They send their own religious missionaries to learn Indian language to translate new Buddhist teachings into Chinese.
• Fa-hsien, famous monk who goes to India.
• Hsuan-Tsang, most famous. Brings back many sutras.
• Lotus Sutra is the most famous of all sutras.
• Buddhism is establishes as a major part of Chinese culture. It enriches rather than dilutes Chinese culture.
• Kushan and Gandara are the provinces in which Buddhism began.
• Buddhist missionaries eventually use visual arts to convey Buddhist ideas. Same idea behind cathedrals in Europe.
• Chinese varieties of Buddhism
• T’ien-t’ai (Tendai) in Japanese. Becomes so popular that it has the defense of the tang dynasty. Heavily scholastic and very doctrinal. They make things one and resolve and eliminate contradictions. It tries to solve these contractions through concepts of relative truth.
• It helps establish the lotus sutra.
• Has no broad mass followers- it is for the elite.
• Hua-yen (Kegon)- flower garland Buddhism. Systematizes concepts and is more into philosophy. Takes all reality and divides it into pairs. Li and Chi. Li here is not ritual or ceremony. It is reason or principle. Li is non material, and is principle. Chi here, means material. This Buddhism teaches that all reality is divided into non- material and material- the stuff of the world. There are similarities with platonic (Plato) Greek thought. India might be the great philosophical head of Greece and China. Does not achieve mass following.
• Ching-t’u (Jodo)- popular by the 5^th century, 400s. Pure land. It is a place you go when you die. It is simplified so that “plain” people can understand. It is a bodhisattva religion, has a concept of getting nirvana by faith, and by faith calling on the name of the Buddha. Guan-yin is the “hearer of the world” . Can be male or female, and Guan Yin here is a translation not a transliteration. Painters paint all kinds of scenes of the pure land. This largely conquers china and eventually goes to Japan and hits the west in the 20^th century.
• Ch’an (Zen). It sees not the study of the sutra and no the study of Indian languages but rather sees mediation as the most important thing you can do to achieve nirvana. Kueinan? Argues that nirvana comes at a sudden flash of insight but only happens after a long periods of searching. Look within to find your own Buddha nature. This is welcome news to many Chinese Buddhists. They are excited about this idea (having the Buddha within you). You feel it, or meditate on it. This type is anti-scholastic and anti-intellectual. The inherency of the Buddhist nature within a person in close to mencian train of thought. This absolutely, uniquely Chinese. Couldn’t have been born anywhere else except for China. Many see this as heresy or distortion. THINK LESS AND FEEL MORE. Kung-an/ Koan; non sensical question with the non sensical answer. What is the sound of one hand clapping? How can I achieve Nirvana? Kill.
• The birth of an entirely new view of the Earth.
• The pattern of investing and saving ultimately has its roots in Calvinistic Christianity.
• The idea of doing well, trying to outdo yourself is a commonality between the east and west.
• Zen Buddhism argues against the idea of having to withdraw yourself from the world. It is not very monastic.
• Almost never are there fights between Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism. Why? Because neither of the three are mono-theistic. Therefore, they get along.
• Buddhism is the single greatest forward influence EVER to enter China. Greater than even Marxism and Leninism . Greater than western ideas or concepts. Nothing has ever reached the influential level of Buddhism.